Codrin Bălan#Castor — 2325

The first interview of note that Codrin Bălan conducted was with an author who had chosen to invest completely in the launches, leaving no one behind.

At first, Codrin wondered why it was that this author had chosen to be a part of the interview process, why it was that Dear had recommended him. He seemed, on the surface to be entirely uninteresting. He was an author. That was that.

His name was Martin Rankin, and while Codrin had not read any of his works prior to the suggestion, ey had certainly heard the name in the various literary circles that ey trawled on occasion. A man prone to grand literary gestures, one who leaned heavily on the twisting of endless sentences, ceaseless streams of fragments, prose that bordered on florid even by Codrin’s relatively flowery standards. Ey knew that ey was prone to many of the same pitfalls, but this man took it to an extreme that they found unreasonable.

Codrin, to prepare for the interview, had read two of Rankin’s books. They were not without their merit, as might any such book be that garnered so much attention, but they still took plenty of work to get through. He wrote most often about contemporary life within the System in all its deliriously boring intricacies.

That said, much of his work was bound up in a sense of magical realism that was, ey had to admit, enticing. This was something that Codrin had never managed to capture emself, and so ey set aside some time to study the ways in which Rankin used surrealism to enhance the story at hand without distracting.

Martin Rankin was exactly as ey had expected. There was nothing about him that did not shout Martin Rankin. He wore his identity on his face, on his chest, in the way his hands moved across the table as they talked, there at the cafe, there sitting out on the street, there sipping their coffees.

“So, you are the illustrious Codrin Bălan.” His voice was imperious, veering dangerously close to pompous, looking over the rim of the demitasse appraisingly at em as he sipped espresso.

Something about the man grated. Ey wasn’t quite sure what it was at first, whether it was the self-assured way he spoke, or the self-aggrandizing expression he wore on his face. It was nigh intolerable.

All the same, ey tried eir best to keep up eir smile as ey spoke. “And you’re Martin Rankin. It’s a pleasure to finally get the chance to meet you in the flesh. Thank y–“

“What a curious choice of phrase, in the flesh.” His tone was droll, bored. “Have you stopped to think of all of the little idioms we bring with us from ‘phys-side’? Even that term! Phys-side. It spells out very plainly that we do not exist in that form any longer. We exist in opposition to it. ‘Sys-side’ contains no such sense of our abstract existence.”

Ey nodded, smiling ingratiatingly. The man was clearly used to having the chance to expound on his own ideas, and anything that anyone else had to say was of secondary importance — if it was important at all. Ey decided to lean into that. “What a beautiful way to put that. Do you think that the same applies to the dichotomy between L₅ System and launch?”

The simpering tone appeared to appeal to Rankin’s sensibilities, as he smiled down to Codrin with all the patronizing disdain of bless your heart. “I do believe so. What can we say but ‘launch-side’ and ‘sys-side’? Do those truly say anything about our existence here? We are hurtling out into space at some terrifying speed, driven by the momentum imparted by the spin of the station and the deliciously thin membranes of those solar sails. Ah! What a journey on which we have decided to embark! We lucky few. Those back on the System know nothing of our experiences out here, even if they have also decided to join. There is no way to accurately transmit that experience through text alone.”

Hiding a grimace behind a sip of eir own espresso, Codrin jotted down the author’s words. The first thing that Rankin had done upon meeting up with em had been to make a similarly patronizing comment about the anachronistic nature of pen and paper. Ey had supposed at first that ey’d met a fellow admirer of fine pens, fine paper, and the joy of beautiful inks.

Alas.

“I’ve heard from my partner that–“

“Ah, yes! The illustrious Dear! How is he?”

“It. It’s doing quite well.”

“Right, right. It always did have such a strange way of moving through the world.”

“If we could–” Ey cut emself off and recomposed eir plastic smile. “I’ve heard that you are working on a project that capitalizes on this. Can you expand on that?”

“Of course! Of course. I will always help a fellow writer.” He set his cup aside and made a grand sweep of his arm. “You look around you, and you see so many going about their lives as they might have otherwise. Even I am guilty of the dalliance of getting up, drinking coffee, perhaps sitting and reading a while. We lucky few–” Codrin knew that some two and a half billion personalities were on the launches, but ey declined to comment. “–can draw so much inspiration from a project on so grand a scale. My project is one that utilizes the base nature of a personality embedded in a System that cares not for consistency between its two constituent parts.

“Before I disappeared from the L₅ System, I wrote an outline for a new book describing the universal feelings of exploration that are bound up in this endeavor, and now I am working writing the book which follows that outline. My counterpart on the Pollux launch is doing the same — he had better be! — and we are sending the results of our labors back to the System to an editor who is a most trusted companion, and he is compiling them into a single book which will serve to showcase the similarities and differences that one mind can hold when it has lost a unifying sense of self!”

Codrin wrote quickly, not just to keep up, but also to keep eir eyes on the page and away from the by now nearly dancelike gestures that Rankin was using. Ey wondered just how much of it was a conscious decision to be witnessed (and thus perhaps a deeply ingrained need to be seen and not forgotten), and how much of it was some innate characteristic of this certain, special type of asshole.

“Does that make sense, my dear Codrin?”

“Oh, yes. Yes it does, Mr. Rankin.”

He sat back in his seat with a self-satisfied smirk. “I think that you’ll like the end product. I’ve read some of your own works, by the way. You pick some quite interesting projects about our post-human life, though I must admit that your style is quite dry.”

“Such is the life of a historian, I suppose.”

Rankin laughed. “Of course, of course, I forget myself. You’ll have to send me your notes for this current project, and I’ll see if I can pull them together into something coherent and readable.”

Ey bit eir tongue and nodded. “Of course, I’ll see about doing so when I’m done. Back to your work, however; do you have any predictions on how the works will differ?”

“The work, Codrin. It’s a very singular work. Both me and my counterpart are writing the exact same work, and the only difference is the circumstances.” He waved off any reply before continuing. “Though imagine that our two takes began quite similar, and then started to diverge further as time continues, such as a fork might diverge from its down-tree instance. How interesting! A work that, in some core mechanism, follows the exact same path as our daily existence.”

“And you have an editor who is merging these two threads? Are they planning on doing something special with the presentation of it?”

“Yes. Yes! Of course, what is a book but an experience? A book should be delightfully difficult to read, if it is to be enjoyed to the fullest. You are engaging with a topic, you must — must — put in the same amount of effort that the author has! We have plans to arrange the two texts side-by-side, locked together at the points specified in the outline, as well as any similarities that the texts share. Imagine, I, Rankin#Castor, writing, “And so, in my heart of hearts, I knew the truth among the stars” while Rankin#Pollux writes, “And so, in my heart of hearts, I know the truth among the wheeling of the stars.” From there, we can have the texts line up on the page, and perhaps even highlight the similarities. My editor promises that he won’t send me any of the result until it’s complete and ready for manuscript sign off, lest #Pollux’s writing influence my own.”

Once ey had finished jotting in eir shorthand, Codrin asked, “Do you have any idea on how the work will be received?”

“Ah yes, the problem of reception.” Rankin smiled sourly. “Our works have inherent worth, and yet we must, at some point, rely on readers for their validation. I hope that it will be received quite well, though I know that it will go over the heads of many. Such can’t be helped, though, for even in this world of leisure and ease, many still claim that they don’t have time to read. Time! We have all the time in the universe, if we try hard enough, and yet here we are, spinning our wheels on whether or not there’s time enough to read a book! What rubbish.”

“Do you often fork to read books?”

Rankin frowned, at which Codrin took secret pleasure. “No. There are some aspects of life which must be experienced singularly and without the dreary experience of reclaiming memories from a dying mind.”

“Dying?”

“What is the act of quitting but that of death?”

Codrin withheld eir thoughts on the matter, asking instead, “Perhaps there’s a story there, too. Read a book, quit, and then write about the experience of having only the memory of reading that book. It seems to fall in line with the scope of your current project.”

Rankin’s expression grew colder. “An interesting problem for you to tackle, my dear Codrin. I look forward to your monograph on the subject.”

That secret pleasure grew warmer. Ey suspected that Rankin would have enjoyed such a project, had the idea come from within, rather than from someone else. “I’ll have to give it a go, sometime, though I suspect my dry writing will fall short of yours.”

A little bit of sucking up warmed him again, and Codrin once again marveled at what an art conducting interviews was.

“Writing is something that comes from much practice. I can do little but encourage you to practice, practice, and practice some more.” He laughed, jabbing a finger at em. “After all, we have all the time in the world, do we not?”

Ey gave a hint of a bow, a moment of silence to show eir appreciation, and then continued. “Do you have any projects planned after this book? Perhaps something to work on alongside it?”

“Of course! It’s important not to fall into the trap of working on a single project, otherwise you’ll feel obliged to refine and refine and refine! Keep it varied. I’m also working on a novel exploring income inequalities within the System. Or Systems, perhaps. This will hopefully be released concurrent with my main work. This is being done by a separate fork, and we merge weekly on the project. It takes no small amount of focus to keep either one of us from getting sidetracked, but it’s important that we continue our work at a good pace. We may have all the time in the world, but it’s easy enough to be forgotten in our current market if we don’t keep coming out with more and more works, eh?”

“There is that, yes. At least there’s not a livelihood resting on it.”

“Oh but there is! I’m sure that if my words aren’t read, that I’ll disappear into nothingness!”

Ah, Codrin thought. There it is. “Does this drive influence your writing?”

“Oh, here and there,” Rankin said, waggling a hand. “Sometimes I’ll cut corners to ensure that I’m always writing something, or I’ll split off enough forks to work in shifts, ensuring that I’m always writing at all hours of the day, such as it is. One will work a shift, merge with the next to keep the momentum going, and go to bed.”

“That must be a very productive experience.”

“It is! It very much is. You should try it, my dear Codrin.”

“I most certainly will,” ey lied. Ey was no stranger to modified sleep schedules and just how unpleasant that could be. “Do you have any last words of wisdom that you’d like to impart for the eventual readers of this project?”

“I would tell them this: you are always dreaming, but you should always dream bigger. What but big dreams was it that led to these launches? What but big dreams was it that led to the System as a whole? Dream big! Dream your own dreams. Bring them to fruition, and bigger and brighter things will benefit us all.”

Codrin finished eir transcribing with a flourish and bowed to Rankin. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Rankin. Is there anything else?”

“Only to thank you for your time. Make sure you get me your notes, and I’ll make sure that you and Dear each get a copy of the upcoming book once it’s done. Do tell him hi for me.”

“It, but yes, I will say hi.”

“Right, right. Do tell it hi.” Rankin quit before, Codrin suspected, he could roll his eyes.

Ey bit eir tongue until ey was back home at the house on the prairie. Ey stomped out into the grass to eir very first cairn, set eir paper and pens down carefully in the grass, and shouted to the cloud-dotted sky. “What an enormous sack of shit, good Lord.”

Then ey picked up eir supplies and walked back to the house.

Eir partners greeted em at the door, both looking winded and still laughing.

“You heard, I take it?”

“Tell us how you really feel, my dear.”

Codrin rolled eir eyes. “Not a fan. Let me set my shit down and get a glass of wine or something.”

Dear gasped, paw to muzzle. “A curse! Codrin! I am shocked.”

“I’ll get the wine,” its partner said, still laughing.

They gathered on the couch where Codrin could lounge against Dear with eir feet up in its partner’s lap.

“So, how was it, really? Was he really that bad?” Dear asked.

“You didn’t tell me that he was so…so…”

“Pompous? That his head was so far up his ass that he could smell his breath?”

Codrin laughed and poked the fox in the side. “Yeah, those things. I’m guessing you don’t think too highly of him, either?”

“Not particularly, no,” Dear said, brushing fingers through Codrin’s hair. “I was more wondering if a writer — a writer in particular, I mean — might have some ideas that you could glean for this project of ours.”

“I suppose.” Ey kept silent for a moment, simply enjoying the physical contact. “Though, come to think of it, his current project sounds interesting enough.”

“The dual text thing?” Dear’s partner asked.

“Yeah. Did he tell you about that?”

“Mmhm. It sounds interesting, at least on the surface. We’ll have to see how the execution works out, though. It could be stupendously boring.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“It is not a bad idea for a project such as he is wont to do,” Dear murmured, sounding distant. “I would not have turned down the opportunity to do such myself, if the types of projects that I do fit that framework.”

“The thing is, I don’t think it’ll work for ours.” Codrin shrugged against Dear’s thigh. “I don’t think spoiling Codrin#Pollux is something we really need to worry about, and I’m sure Ioan will keep sending us interesting stuff.”

“Probably best to not, actually,” Dear’s partner said.

“Right. Come to think of it, even Rankin said that he started with an outline to keep the two instances organized. We could probably do with more organization between the three of us.”

“Or the three of our groups, at least. Perhaps Pollux and Ioan taken together will provide us with a good idea of where we should be working next.”

“Do you want to send Ioan a note to start coordinating?”

“I just did.”

There was a sensorium ping, a view of the office where Ioan had begun work so many years ago.

“I should’ve known.”

“I am more predictable than you give me credit for, my dear.”

After a moment’s silence, ey grumbled, “He even kept calling you ‘he’. Drove me nuts.”

Dear made a strange face, then threw its head back and cackled. “He has honed his insensitivity into quite the art. What a delight! So, while he was being a pompous ass, did he actually have anything to add to the conversation besides that one idea?”

Codrin shook eir head.

“He always was a one-trick pony.”

“He also kept talking about idioms that applied mostly to phys-side and how they stick around here, on that note. But still, being a one-trick pony is a worry I struggle with.”

“That you struggle with it, that all of us mere mortals struggle with it, is what keeps us separate from them.”

“‘Them’?” Dear’s partner laughed. “You make them sound way more organized than they really are.”

“They do not need to be. They are all the same.”